Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Krag Restock Front Band

Restocking my M1898 cut down rifle, as original stock is falling apart. The sporter stock is not cut for military front band. Krag action only has 2 screws on trigger guard, and used a band on the forearm. DeHaas book on bolt actions suggests using an internal band in the forearm. I can't find such a part existing. It seems the 2 existing action screws are pretty far back on the rifle compared to a typical bolt action.

Anyone with experience dealing with this?

You absolutely need to add a third screw to your rig. It can be by way of a barrel band, or by drilling and tapping the front of the receiver and putting a screw up through the stock. Mind you the Krag receiver is as hard as woodpecker lips and you'll be hating life by the time you're done doing it.

The barrel band was the accepted way of doing it. If you can't find a commercially made one, it's no big deal to make one. Another means of anchoring the barrel to the fore arm would be to cut a dovetail on the bottom side and fit a chunk of steel into it and then drill/tap that.

Bottom line, you can't rely on the two trigger guard screws to anchor the Krag into its stock. Every time you discharge the rifle when relying on just those two screws the barreled action will try to lever itself up and back out of the stock.

The Savage 340 series rifles use one action screw and a barrel band to anchor the barreled action in the stock.

If that would work for you, GPC has two of the three parts that you'd need, numbers 25, 26, and 57 as shown in the schematic of Savage 340 series E.

#25 is the barrel band
#26 is the barrel band nut, the part that is out of stock
#57 is the barrel band screw

Jack First might have the barrel band nut.

Looking to find the Savage parts.

Looking to find the Savage parts.

In 2018 I sporterized a Krag. I wound up drilling and tapping a blind hole in the front bottom of the receiver in 1/4-28.

It is like the front action screw in a Rem700.